Bittersweet, Nevada Barr

Some are born lesbians; some are called.  A comanion piece to Brokeback Mountain.  Starts as a sage, finishes as a Maupassant short story.  Well written, not so well edited.

A Perfect Execution, Tim Binding

Who'd have the executing people could be boring?

The Triumph: A Novel, John Kenneth Galbraith

Fashionable writing for the sixties.  If you missed them, read it now.

The Woman in the Fifth, Douglas Kennedy

 Harry Ricks loses everything, escapes to Paris & meets the secretive Margit.  Like all Douglas Kennedy, this is unputdownable, but I found the denouement less satisfying than his other books 

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Also known as Everyone Dies Alone.  Life in wartime Berlin among the ordinary, the minor crooks, the Gestapo and an old couple who resist by leaving messages on postcards throughout the city.  Even tone makes sudden violence the more shocking.  (I read this in French.)

13 1/2 by Nevada Barr

No Anna Pigeon, no National Parks. Just fine writing, suspense, and twists and turns that always keeps you guessing.

Prizzi's Honor, Richard Condon

Before the Sopranos and the Corleones, there were the Prizzis.  In this world, Condon treats the Prizzis as normal and reserves his ire for the politicians and other powers that be.  In this one, the Prizzis turn "respectable."  Very funny.

A Special Relationship, Douglas Kennedy

My new surgeon recommended Kennedy and this is my second: absolutely unputdownable.  American foreign correspondent marries British FC in Egypt, gets pregnant, suffers the all-time worst post-partum depression in history and winds up, friendless, in court.  Kennedy writes in the first person as a woman.  Masterful (mistressful?) job.

It's not 25 words.  I'll practice.

112. The Saddlebag, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

Cross between A Canterbury Tale and The Arabian Nights. Well done, I think, but not my style.

101. Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene

An "entertainment" with loveable priest and loveable Marxist mayor in conversation. Don Camillo in Spain? I didn't finish that one, either.

85. Renato's Luck, Jeff Shapiro (Audio)

Lovely story of life in a small Italian village. Everyone has problems and they get solved in unexpected ways.

80. The Sweetheart Season, Karen Joy Fowler

Fowler is a wonderful writer with an unexpected way with words. Not really about baseball. A coming-of-age novel about women (for a change) in 1947.

79. Walkin' the Dog, Walter Mosley

Mosleys Blacks are different from thee and me (white people) and worth listening to. Fine short stories about the street philosopher/ex-con Socrates Fortlow.

75. The Man in My Basement, Walter Mosley

Good story and discussion of good and evil, but, really, I'm beginning to worry about Mosley's state of mind.

44. Granta No. 105 - Lost and Found

This counts because I read the whole thing. Super issue.